Shadows on the Nile Read online

  ‘Monty, what went on in there?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She looked at him hard and he had the grace to let his understanding show.

  ‘Miss Kenton, we are trying to help you. Not to deceive you. I assure you Dr Scott is trustworthy. He was honest with you about what happened with your brother.’ His voice was low and she had to listen carefully above the clamour of the harsh rhythms of the city. ‘Why wouldn’t he be? He has nothing to gain.’

  She stepped closer than good manners allowed. ‘And you, Monty, are you being honest with me?’ she asked steadily. ‘Do you have anything to gain?’

  Instead of a reply he took hold of her hand and drew it through his arm, setting off once more down the steps, so that she was obliged to move with him. She lengthened her stride to match his.

  ‘I can see how much your brother means to you,’ he said.

  You have no idea what my brother means to me. You have no idea that losing Timothy is like losing part of myself.

  They strode towards the archway that led into Trafalgar Square and she let him keep her hand captive.

  ‘I am being honest with you, Miss Kenton, please don’t doubt that. If I seem at all …’ he flicked his fingers towards the sky, ‘… dubious, it is because I feel the weight of responsibility for the séance heavy on my shoulders. Hence the antics with Madame Anastasia. I regret …’ His voice trailed away.

  Jessie turned her head, fixing her eyes on his thin face with its cliff-edge cheekbones, sensing that something more solid was about to come from him. But she noticed his frown, alert as a gundog as his attention was drawn by some movement beyond the grandiose stone of Admiralty Arch ahead. Noises filtered through. Loud voices. Shouts. From somewhere came a sudden brittle crack, like the sound of bones snapping, and it sent Jessie’s heart racing to her throat.

  16

  Monty could smell blood. Could sense fear. Thick as lard. On the wind and in the shouts that gusted out of the square ahead. His fingers tightened their grip on her.

  ‘We should perhaps retreat,’ he suggested, keeping it casual. ‘Caution being the better part of valour, and all that rot? Don’t you think?’

  He saw it, the sharp flash of disappointment in her eyes, and he knew what she was thinking. Is this the man whose ancestors have ridden into battle with fearless leadership, flinging caution to the ground under their horses’ charging hooves? Retreat? A word not in their vocabulary.

  But he said it again. ‘We should retreat.’ More firmly this time.

  It was obvious that there could only be one reason today of all days for blood and fear to be found outside the sedate pillars of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. He had more sense than to get involved. And yet he felt her flicker of scorn like the thinnest tip of a whip stinging his skin, bringing blood to his cheeks.

  She kept walking.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘A demonstration of some kind, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Of course! It’s the marchers. They are arriving in London today to protest against the Means Test. You must have heard about it, thousands of them have come from up north and from Wales to vent their anger. They’re presenting a petition with a million signatures to—’

  ‘I know. Poor devils don’t stand a chance.’

  She started to hurry forward, dragging him with her. ‘All the more reason to cheer them on. To give them support as they march past. Heaven knows, they need it.’

  ‘No, Miss Kenton.’ He pulled her to a halt.

  She tried to break free but he held her arm through his. He could feel the heat in her, rising.

  ‘They will have come from their rally in Hyde Park,’ he told her calmly, ‘and feelings will be running high. It could be unwise. The police will …’

  ‘Come on, even you should be willing to show the police that what Ramsay MacDonald’s government is doing to the unemployed is wrong. He has to repeal …’

  She stopped, as a noise hit them. It sounded like waves dragging across a pebble beach, harsh and out of place in this leafy thoroughfare from Buckingham Palace. The noise issued from beyond the archway.

  ‘Horses’ hooves! They’re charging,’ Monty shouted.

  Instantly they both broke into a run, racing into Trafalgar Square, but they were brought to a halt by the scene in front of them. It was carnage. A battlefield. Dear God, the heart of London had cracked open. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner must have lost his mind.

  Hundreds of men were running, men in heavy boots and thin jackets, men with panic in their eyes and anger in their voices. They were hurtling across the open spaces, flattening themselves against the plinths of the four stone lions that stood guard over Nelson’s Column. Monty could hear their shouts and pitiful cries reverberating through the square, while grey waves of pigeons swirled above their heads as the birds took fright. Metal bars slammed against anything within reach that could be smashed and used as a weapon. Kerbstones and bottles ploughed through the air, while full-grown men were abandoning their protest placards and throwing themselves in the fountain.

  All trying to escape. Desperate to flee the dark menacing wall of police uniforms that drove them from one end of the square to the other. Monty’s heart pounded with rage as the police horses charged the men on foot again and again, their hooves skidding and sparking. Truncheons flashed back and forth, solid wood seeking bone, lashing out at heads and backs, crashing down on shoulders and chests. Men screamed like pigs in panic as their elbows shattered.

  It was obscene.

  How could Sir John Gilmour as Home Secretary condone such a response? Seventy thousand police in London deployed to control the marchers. It sickened Monty’s stomach and made him ashamed. Ashamed of Britain. Of its damn government. Of its brutal laws. He spotted a man in a long raincoat make a stand and launch an attack on one of the constables on foot, knocking his helmet to the ground, calling for other protesters to back him up, his face twisted with hatred. But blue uniforms swamped him, battering him to the ground and dragging him off towards the Black Maria vans parked outside the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

  Another man raced up to where Monty and his companion were standing, backs wedged against the stone upright of the arch. The man’s hands were clutching a placard on a wooden pole, and words daubed on the board were painted in red: DEFEND SOVIET RUSSIA! He took one look at Monty’s suit and shoes, swung back his placard and aimed it straight at Monty’s head. Monty ducked effortlessly – years of being school boxing champ – taking Miss Kenton with him, and wrenched the pole from the man’s hands. It was slick with blood. Whose blood? Its owner vanished into the crowd.

  ‘Damn communist!’ Monty shouted after him but it was swallowed by the noise around them.

  He was worried about Miss Kenton at his side, her eyes dark with distress, her hand trembling on his arm, her body rigid. From shock or fury or terror – he didn’t know. Now was definitely not the time to stop to find out.

  He threw the placard on the ground, face down in the dirt.

  ‘Out of here! Back up the Mall,’ he urged. ‘Run!’

  But at that moment a hand came out of the mêlée of figures streaking past and seized hold of Miss Kenton’s shoulder. Monty wrenched it off.

  ‘Jessie. What the hell are you doing here?’

  Jessie. So that was her name. Like the glamorous Jessica Mitford with whom he had dined last month.

  ‘Archie!’

  She threw an arm around the scarecrow frame of the young man in front of her and peered closely at his face. He was dressed in workman’s garb with a cloth cap clinging precariously to his ginger curls, and despite the cool wind he was sweating. The bones of his face were almost visible beneath his taut skin. He looked like a workman and smelled like a workman, but Monty knew at a glance that it was all a pretence and it was that knowledge, rather than the adrenaline pumping through his veins, that set Monty’s heart hammering in his chest. He could fee
l Jessie’s affection for this man.

  ‘Archie, what went wrong? Come with us, quickly.’ She pulled hard at the young man’s sleeve but he didn’t move.

  ‘It’s bloody Trenchard. The bastard has set his fucking dogs on us.’ Lord Trenchard was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, a man with a tough implacable mind. Monty could see that Archie’s eyes were wild, his pupils huge holes in his head. ‘As if we are rats to be exterminated.’

  A livid bruise pulsed on his jaw and a thread of scarlet snaked down from his scalp. In his hand he clutched half a brick. There was blood on its jagged edge.

  ‘I must get Miss Kenton away from here,’ Monty said urgently, but Archie remained rooted to the spot. He wasn’t leaving the square. Monty recognised the anguished reckless thirst for battle that he had once possessed himself. Until it tore his life apart.

  ‘It wasn’t us.’ Archie shook his head. ‘We just wanted a peaceful march.’

  ‘What about the petition? The million signatures,’ Jessie asked quickly. She was holding her friend close, as though frightened to let him go.

  ‘Stolen from us!’ Archie spat on the ground, a pink gob of spittle. ‘The bloody police seized it at Charing Cross station and confiscated it.’ He stuck out an arm, pointing at the demonstrators still pouring into the square, still brandishing their NUWM banners. It had become a riot. ‘A hundred thousand of London’s workers turned out to cheer us on, but look at them now. That traitor to socialism, MacDonald, has sold his soul to the Tory devil, he …’

  Ten yards away a white-haired man wearing spectacles and an expression of outrage was trying to argue with an officer who was twisting the arm of a gangling youth up behind his back. But it was far too late for words; they fell to the pavement unheeded. The air throbbed and crackled with violence. It had become the only currency in the square. The policeman struck the older man across the throat with his truncheon with so much force that he collapsed to his knees, clawing at his collar.

  ‘Davies!’ Archie bellowed. He launched himself into the crowd and barged a path to the man’s side.

  Monty saw him slam a fist full into the policeman’s face but his timing was all wrong, because at that moment a phalanx of fresh reinforcements in uniform entered Trafalgar Square. Three of them caught sight of Archie’s action and fell on him, unleashing a barrage of blows from their truncheons, driving him into a broken huddle on the ground.

  ‘No! No!’ The scream came from Jessie.

  To hell with it. Monty kicked away a crushed helmet at his feet. This wasn’t his fight. These weren’t his estate workers or his villagers. These men were nothing to him, definitely not his responsibility. He carried more than enough of that on his shoulders already, and now this … He glanced at Jessie’s white face as she started forward in a direct line towards Archie.

  Monty seized her and jammed her back against the wall. ‘Stay! Here!’ he grimaced, and against everything he knew to be sensible, he launched himself into the seething stampede. He pushed and shoved and elbowed his way to where Archie lay curled up tight on the ground, hands clamped over his face. Blood had turned his shirt and his hair into a clown’s costume. Monty bent over and swung the limp figure onto his shoulder like one of the unwieldy sacks of potatoes on his farm, swearing under his breath. Berating the stupidity of Archie and of Ramsay MacDonald, but most of all of himself. Curses poured from his lips, so ferocious that they kept him on his feet even when a truncheon smashed down on his arm, numbing it. He kept moving.

  It was the horse that finished him. It loomed close, then panicked and reared up. Its metal shoe clipped the back of Monty’s head, sending him crashing to the ground. Fuck. All he could see were feet and lightning flashes of what looked like red cricket balls but couldn’t be. His brain felt like a foreign creature growing bigger inside his head, but he managed to ease his human passenger into a bundle on the ground beneath him. It was time to get out of here. He had just clambered up onto his knees when the first blow landed on his back. He grunted. Something between his shoulder blades seemed to explode. When he pushed himself onto his unsteady feet, he felt his knees vanish, to be replaced by something like porridge. He swayed. Lord Nelson’s Column seemed to be falling on him.

  Suddenly a small shoulder hitched up under his arm, halting the spinning world. He blinked and saw a bone-white face, a mass of golden hair. Fierce blue eyes glared into his.

  ‘Don’t you fall down!’ Jessie ordered. ‘Hold onto me.’

  He nodded. A mistake. It took another ten long seconds to find his eyes again. Together they hoisted Archie’s senseless form onto Monty’s good shoulder and staggered towards the archway, but a police constable got there first. Red-faced and breathing hard, his small eyes were bright with excitement. He was young and out of control. He ignored Monty, ignored the slumped body of Archie, but he had greedy eyes for Jessie.

  ‘Out of our way, officer,’ Monty commanded in his best Sir Montague Chamford voice and the constable automatically yielded to the tone of authority and stepped aside.

  But as they hurried past, the hand clutching the truncheon could not resist. It flicked out. Monty saw the wood connect with Jessie’s temple, heard the dull reverberation of pain and her intake of breath. Her knees buckled. He wrapped his free arm around her to keep her on her feet, but his right foot shot out and nailed the constable’s shinbone just below the kneecap. The policeman screeched and bent over, clutching his leg, his chin perfectly placed as Monty’s knee rocketed up to crack open his jaw. He toppled sideways onto the road.

  Monty tightened his grip on his two companions. ‘Let’s get out of here before he wakes up.’

  Jessie raised her head to look at him, her shoulders trembling, her eyes out of focus but struggling for a smile of some sort. He liked her for it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled. ‘What are you? St George fighting the dragon?’

  He uttered a grim laugh and started to carve a path for them back up the Mall. ‘Something like that.’

  17

  Georgie

  England 1928

  You knock. I open the door and you are there with a wide smile on your face, your blond hair trimmed shorter than usual. My blood flows faster at the sight of you, as if it is your energetic heart that is pumping for both of us. That’s what it feels like, that I am a pale translucent ghost for six days a week, but on a Saturday I become a person. I notice how tall you are now.

  ‘Happy birthday, Georgie.’

  ‘Is it my birthday?’

  ‘Yes. Today’s the day.’

  ‘We have never celebrated it before.’

  ‘But today you are twenty-one.’

  You are full of movement, your hands, your shoulders, your golden eyebrows, and I am frightened you will touch me, but you don’t. You know me. You know me well.

  ‘Today,’ you say, ‘you must come out of your bubble.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  You smile at me and say – with that something in your eyes and in your face that makes me feel like warm toffee inside – ‘I know, dear Georgie. Let’s just enjoy today. No lessons for you or me on your birthday, all right?’

  I nod. You have taught me that it is the correct response to a statement ending in ‘all right?’

  ‘Look at the present I’ve brought you.’

  I expect a small box with a pink bow like in the books I’ve read. But you open the door again and push two armchairs into my room, though they only just squeeze through the doorway. I have never seen chairs like this. They are curved like the end of a bathtub, made of silky pale wood the colour of milky tea and have seats of ivory leather. I touch it. Soft as my tongue. They are the most beautiful objects I have ever seen in my life.

  ‘They’re the latest style,’ you tell me. ‘It’s called art deco. The wood is maple. Do you like them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then smile.’

  I make a smile. But it is not real. What I want to do is cry because they are so beaut
iful. I can feel the tears creeping up behind my eyes. You wave a hand at the seat of one of the chairs.

  ‘Try it out.’

  I sit in one, my heart beating fast, and stroke the butter-smooth veneer where my hand lies, my fingers tingling with excitement. I am touched to the core.

  ‘Like it?’ you ask.

  ‘It is the most uncomfortable chair I have ever sat in. The back is too straight and the seat too long.’

  But I do not mind. I sit there in silence, wrapped in beauty. It is several minutes before I realise something is wrong. I don’t know what. I don’t know why. But you are not speaking. I just sit. Waiting.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Georgie, you needn’t have said that. It took me a lot of time and trouble, not to mention hard-earned vacation money, to get you these. You could at least …’ You stop yourself and take a concentrated breath. ‘If you are ever going to get out of here, you must learn to filter the words that come out of your mouth. Like I use a sieve in my excavations of old ruins to get rid of sand and earth and all the rubbish I don’t want. I keep only the valuable bits. You must discard your rubbish thoughts. You must filter them out. Now try again.’

  I go through the list you have taught me. It is written out in the big booming silence in my head.

  I’m fine, thank you. How are you?

  Won’t you sit down?

  Thank you.

  No, thank you.

  How nice to see you.

  What fine weather we are having today.

  What can I do to help you?

  Would you like a cup of tea?

  You look very smart today.

  I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I didn’t mean to offend you.